Fretting about Fate
by k4writer02
Summary: Kim thinks about the Donnellys. This is set when Sean is still in ICU, during/after Episode 2, and before episode 3, the online-only one.


Title: Fretting about Fate

Author: Kate, k4writer02

Rating: PG-13

Fandom/Characters: The Black Donnellys, Kim, Jenny and Helen

Summary: What Kim thinks about the Donnellys

Author's Note: I'm really kind of intrigued by Kim, the girl Sean was on the date with when he got beaten up. She not only came back to try to help him, she stayed at the hospital. I was fascinated by the way Helen shunned Kim and the way Jenny tried not to laugh at it all.

This is set when Sean is still in ICU, during/after Episode 2, and before episode 3, the online-only one.

Three women sit shoulder to shoulder, keeping watch together.

A blond, a redhead, a brunette—a perfect collection.

The mother, the redhead, prays, between his lover, on her right, and the one who's practically his sister, on her left.

Divided, yes, from each other. The mother doesn't think much of the little blond lover, even though the girl didn't abandon him, showing guts, if not sense. And the one on the right? Strangers would wonder what she's doing here, really. Hoping to impress one of the brothers who has come in and gone out again?

But the women are also united, in their grief and fear and hopes, all centering on a beautiful boy on an operating table and the doctors who are trying to make sure his lungs and ribs and skull and brain and bones and organs are all where they ought to be.

Mother, lover, sister/friend.

They wait.

The clock ticks and they visit the coffee machine and the toilets (odd, the way those follow) and the elevators and the nurses' station and the phones. Helen doesn't leave the fifth floor if she can help it, not even to go to the chapel. Jenny stays through the night, leaves for work, comes back after a shift, every time. Kim goes home to shower and change and sleep off the adrenaline crash.

Kim, fragile and pretty, with a bruise on her temple and confusion everywhere, refuses to be chased away by Helen's frigid distance. It doesn't make sense for her to stay, really. Kim has known Sean less than a day, had kissed him on the front seat of her car and agreed to a date with a cocky boy in a union because he was cute and well, why not? But it's clear, fast, that she doesn't belong, even though her role is defined and Jenny's isn't. At least not to Kim.

But even though she doesn't know him much and she's not all that welcome, Kim stays. She may not be Catholic and she is not Irish, but she knows that there are three leaves in a shamrock, three parts to the trinity, three parts to just about everything Irish.

Even three aspects to the woman—maiden, mother, crone.

Of course, by that schema, she'd have to be a virgin, Jenny would have a kid, and Helen's hair color would've come out of a box. So maybe not so much.

Sean's mother hasn't been telling any stories, and Jenny has been fielding the visitors and the well wishers and the brothers.

Kim cannot believe that there are four of them. Kevin is all curly hair and concern. Tommy she knows, but she's never seen him like this, didn't know what taking him home to his neighborhood would do to him. And the oldest? Jimmy is a mess—he frightened her and she found herself huddling in the chapel, until long after he left for beer and went to jail.

Kim has never known anyone who went to jail, unless you count the kids who get busted at parties and get taken away in the paddy wagon.

Maybe she shouldn't use that particular term around here.

Jenny tries to be kind, but she fits better, as much as anyone can fit in the antiseptic, bureaucratic diocesan hospital. She belongs to this community and Kim surely does not. Jenny knows the men and women who come in, offering food and Mass cards and trite words—"He's a strong boy" and "What a tragedy." It's the same things they said at her favorite cousin's wake, sixteen and sideswiped by an eighteen-wheeler on the Verrazano. Kim knows that stupid tragedies can befall you anywhere, but she never thought her tragedy would come from men with bats and boots and fists.

Kim tries not to think about wakes or tragedies, tries to think only about Grey's Anatomy and ER and miracles and Sean's lips, skilled and enticing against her mouth.

Jenny organizes a rosary when several of the Catholic Daughters who've lost their sons converge on Helen. Before Helen can say something she won't regret, Jenny begins saying the Glorious mysteries, refusing the Sorrowful and Joyful and newest "Mysteries of Light." Her voice murmurs low, and the women respond in chorus, chanting like members of a cult.

Kim sits apart. She never learned how to pray like that. She knows the Lord's Prayer and the beginning of Psalm 23 and all the verses to Sunday-School children's songs, like "Jesus Loves Me," but she doesn't know how to run her fingers along the beads of a necklace and believe that it makes any difference at all.

The Catholic Daughters leave, all except Helen's best friend, and chief gossip partner.

When she sees that they want to visit, Kim steps outside the hospital, to make a call on her cell phone, and Jenny follows her, leaving Helen with the wrinkled old prune who sized Kim up like a cut of meat she found wanting. Kim wouldn't have been surprised to hear some kind of verdict pronounced—"Not enough meat on the bone," or "Spoiled."

Kim is trembling when she hangs up the phone with her roommate—yeah I'm still at the hospital with that guy, I just don't want to leave yet, yeah, his family's here, will you stop bugging me about it and cover for me in class today?

"Don't worry about her." Jenny says, exhaling a plume of smoke off a bummed cigarette.

Kim gives her a startled glance. "My roommate?"

Jenny shook her head. "No, I meant Sean's mother. It's just Irish mothers—you know the joke."

Kim doesn't, so she shakes her head and regrets it. Her head is killing her, and she doesn't know if it's because she got beaten up or because of the tension or because of long exposure to the harsh institutional lighting in the hospital. She can't think, and she wants to cry, because round two of her adrenaline is dying off fast.

Jenny tries to smile, "Well, around here, people say, "if Jesus came back, he'd be Irish, because he thought his mother was a virgin, and she thought her son was God almighty." Jenny is embarrassed, so she quickly qualifies it, "Stupid, but it's just…Seanie's the baby, that's all."

"You're trying to make me feel better about not being good enough?" Kim asks, incredulous.

"No." Jenny disagrees, inhaling the cigarette. "I'm trying to explain that Sean's mother would treat anyone in your shoes that way. See if you can find Rosie Fitzpatrick to tell you about the time Kevin brought her home."

Kim doesn't know Rosie Fitzpatrick and doesn't think she wants to know about Kevin's love life. "She likes you," Kim accuses.

"She half raised me." Jenny shrugged. "My mother wasn't—I learned fast not to count on her for the stuff that matters, see?"

Kim is unconvinced.

"Listen—you think that's bad? My mother-in-law wore black to the wedding, like an Italian widow."

The reference means little to Kim.

"She cried the whole time—she sat by the guy who videotaped it for us, so you can't hear a word of the ceremony. Worst wedding video you've ever seen."

Kim looks down at Jenny's left hand and doesn't see a ring. The ring is on her right hand, and Kim thought only widows and lesbians wore rings there? She remembers the way Jenny looked at Tommy, when he got on the elevator, and in the waiting room. Her head hurts too much to go Nancy-Drew on those clues. "Are you…"

"Still married?" Jenny drops the cigarette, grinds it into the pavement. "Probably. I don't know."

Kim raises her eyebrows. She doesn't understand this place at all.

Jenny sighs, "I'm going back inside." Unasked, the question hangs-- You coming?

"I'll be there in a few minutes." Kim needs to decompress, just a little.

Jenny nods, returns to Helen

Kim follows after she sees the last Catholic Daughter leave.

They wait some more.

March 10, 2007


End file.
